February 26, 2011 4:40 pm

Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll talked to Seattle-area reporters this afternoon, and stated that he liked the overall depth in the draft, which should work in Seattle’s favor in picking up a quality player with the team’s No. 25 overall pick in the first round.

“I don’t think there’s any question that there’s going to be some choices at that spot,” he said. “There’s enough positions that have enough guys that there’s going to be a lot of guys there as we move are way through it. And I can’t imagine that position will get wiped out, so we’re going to have some good shots there. But it’s not nearly as easy to call as last time. We really had a real good idea what was going on.”

Carroll went on to say the most important thing that happened in his first season with Seattle is cultivating a good relationship with general manager John Schneider by spending a lot of time together picking each others brain and understanding each person’s philosophy in building a winning football team.

“We worked hard at that,” he said. “We hung out. We stayed together, and just kind of lived together, and just kept talking and working together until our language became more connected and more common.”

With new offensive line coach Tom Cable and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell in the fold, Carroll said the two moved quickly to get things going on that side of the ball.

“Tom and Darrell have really hit this thing running,” Carroll said. “I’ve had to go back to some philosophical things to get us on the same page, even before they did anything offensively, just to keep talking about relationships, the way we want to communicate and the direction we want to go in, to make things as clear as I could for them, so that when they started, they would have a real good sense of how I was expecting it to go.”

Carroll said he wanted his coaching philosophy and team culture established first before the two coaches started the evaluation of personnel, this past season, the upcoming season and the playbook, with target deadlines for all of those tasks needing to be met soon.

Besides a re-emphasis on creating offensive balance and running the football, scheme-wise Carroll said don’t expect a lot of changes.

“Both guys come out of exactly the same foundation and terminology,” he said. “There’s always something that you have to tweak. But the great majority of it these guys absolutely know, and they cross right over. Immediately each guy can talk to the offense, and they know exactly what they’re talking about.

“And it allows us not to have to change much. There’s a real continuity thought in mind there to help our players move ahead. To wholesale shift and change everything, particularly in this year, it could be harder. So we’re hoping that will really allow us to move quickly. But hopefully it will look better”

With the obvious priority on upgrading the offensive line, Carroll believes his team got an early start on that task by adding young players like offensive tackles Breno Giacomini and William Robinson to the roster last season, along with interior linemen Chris White, Paul Fanaika and Lemuel Jeanpierre. Those players, along with Tyler Polumbus, Mike Gibson and Max Unger should give Seattle a solid nucleus in improving that area heading into the 2011 season.

“We have helped our roster,” Carroll said. “We’ve made it more competitive. We struggled getting enough guys together on the offensive line last year. And we have a much better group of guys coming back to camp this time around, whatever comes up in the draft or free agency.

“But the guys that we brought in during the year are competitive. And there’s really some good players fighting for starter spots and can make it more competitive, and maybe emerge in front of it. So that’s just an example of it. That took all year to get it done. And we still have a lot of work to do in other areas of the roster to continue to keep pushing it.”

On the ongoing negotiations with quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, Carroll said the two sides continue to talk, with Hasselbeck scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent on Friday.

“All I will say is we’ve been working hard. I’ve told you how I felt about it from the start, and we’ve continued to work hard. There’s a bit of a deadline coming up. March 4th is looming and so we’re working at stuff with a number of guys on the roster.”

Blog search

Twitter

About

Gregg Bell joined The News Tribune in July 2014. Bell had been the director of writing for the University of Washington's athletic department for four years. He was the senior national sports writer in Seattle for The Associated Press from 2005-10, covering the Seahawks in their first Super Bowl season and beyond. He's also been The Sacramento Bee's beat writer on the Oakland Athletics and Raiders. The native of Steubenville, Ohio, is a 1993 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and a 2000 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

LOL!!! Could be pretty interesting if PC & JS have both,
Jake Locker & Mike Pouncey,
available at our 1st pick…. I would have to think that Pouncey would be the pick (though I realistically don’t believe he’ll be available to us at 25)…
Key is, as we all know, QB is such a unique and valuable position…. passing on Locker would take some bg kahuna’s….

“With the obvious priority on upgrading the offensive line, Carroll believes his team got an early start on that task by adding young players like offensive tackles Breno Giacomini and William Robinson to the roster last season, along with interior linemen Chris White, Paul Fanaika and Lemuel Jeanpierre. Those players, along with Tyler Polumbus, Mike Gibson and Max Unger should give Seattle a solid nucleus in improving that area heading into the 2011 season.” Can’t quite make out what he’s saying here. Is a “solid nucleus” mean all these guys will be on the 53-man team in ’11? ‘Solid nucleus’ doesn’t sound much like ‘practice squad’. That’s 8 OL players out of how many? 3 QBs, 3 TEs, 6 WRs, 5 RBs = 17. 25-17 = 8 OLers? Was hoping to get a few in this draft?

I think there’s a 95.37% probability that we draft an offensive lineman with at least one of our top two draft picks. He knows our line sucks and is going to make sure that we have the bodies that will allow us to actually run the ball this season.

Fix the offensive line and maybe get two more years of Matt. Plenty of time to bring along a young Locker, I mean QB. Spend the money on a free agent OL. A good line helps the offense and keeps the defense off the field.

It shows that the pro personnel department can’t be just about scouting and talent evaluation. There’s a big component to investigative reporting on other teams as well. Even if Seattle felt Locker was 1st round worthy, if Lombardi were right, Seattle would need to confirm Lombardi’s view to make the most of their picks (trade back or take Locker later.)

Looks like Ponder will throw after all at the combine, looks like a real competitor, maybe he is interesting for us with a second round pick? But I like our position in the draft, wouldn’t have minded to have an earlier pick so that we were almost sure to have Pouncey, Carimi or someone like that on the board, but there should be a lot of good talent on both lines, and the corners as Duke said, and who knows, maybe (hopefully) we’ll trade around a bunch, just like last year, a scenario I certainly see happening.

Locker might be a great draft but this isn’t the year to spend the money on a 1st round quarterback pick. Whoever gets put in as quarterback isn’t going to improve our chances until we have a team that’s good enough to earn respect. We need a team talented enough and skilled enough to make to make playing quarterback fun, not a death sentence. Then we can get a squeaky-new ball handler and they will have a chance of success. Otherwise they will be running for their lives and the fans will be calling them nasty names like they do to Matt.

We need to spend those 1st draft pick dollars on building up a solid team for now.

I think every team, though not locked into a particular tradition, still has one. The Seahawks’ tradition, if you will, is offense. We all can agree that a great OL is what propelled them to the Super Bowl, while the defense was also a big factor. So I hope for a guard, a RT, a big, blocking fullback, and a really efficient pass receiver to go along with whom they already have. A corner would be essential too, but let’s see what Kennard Cox can do first. I don’t think a QB who was on drugs; or one who can barely throw a spiral should be on the ‘important acquisitions list.’

We welcome comments. Please keep them civil, short and to the point. ALL CAPS, spam, obscene, profane, abusive and off topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for taking part and abiding by these simple rules.